PENSIONS CHAOS

Yesterday my four-year old children were sent home at mid-day without lunch because their school was affected by “industrial action.” At the school’s main gate other children the same age had to cross a picket line to get to their classes. Across Cumbria 27 schools were affected, 14 of them in Copeland. The people who went on strike yesterday have every right to be angry with Gordon Brown and John Hutton over their pensions, but I hope that great care will be taken on all sides not to use children’s education as a pawn in an adult dispute.

There are three points on which I agree with the strikers.

- The first is that everyone is right to be concerned about their future pension arrangements and entitled to lobby to secure the best deal they can.

- The second is that the government has shown bad faith to the public sector in general including local government workers on pensions, and much of the blame for yesterday’s strike rests with the government.

- The third is that there are stressful public sector jobs including some of those affected by yesterday’s strike, at which many people will not be able to work full-time to the age of 65 or older without serious risks to their health. We as a society need to make retirement arrangements flexible enough that other alternatives are available.

However, if we do not want to make the long-term pension situation much worse we have to recognise that the long-term ability of almost every employer in Britain including both central and local government, to finance pensions on present terms is simply not there. After nine years of unforgivable mismanagement by Gordon Brown of Britain’s pensions, present arrangements are becoming increasingly unsustainable.

Strange as it may seem, the worst betrayal by this government on pensions in the past year is not the current cack-handed attempt to bring local government pensions more into line with what can be afforded. However strange this may seem to the people who went on strike yesterday, the public sector workers who the government is cheating most disgracefully are the younger employees in the groups who were promised last year that any current employee can retire at 60 on a full pension based on final salary. Whoever is elected at future elections over the next forty years, I do not believe that there is any realistic chance that future governments will be able to afford to keep that promise.

And to make promises to protect future pensions which you cannot keep is even worse that to admit now that you will have to change pension arrangements – at least the people who get the bad news now will have more warning to make alternative provision.

A report published today by eighty pensions experts suggests that the measures proposed by the Turner Commission do not go far enough to put British pensions back on a sustainable footing. They may well be right. But what is certain is that the longer the government dithers, the more painful the necessary measures will become when someone is finally forced to act.

Comments

Chris Whiteside said…
Absolutely right on both points. See today's entry (April First but no joke)

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